TIVERTON — Ground was broken in four round holes at the Bulgarmarsh Recreation Center on Friday, the first steps in the construction of a gazebo at the site.

A crew from the town’s public works department went to the playground early Friday, digging holes 4 feet deep to sink the tubes that will support a 24- by 24-foot steel structure.

The gazebo will be erected next to the baseball diamond and across the parking lot from the skate park and the children’s playground.

There will be four footings 30 inches wide, one at each corner of the structure. Eight more footings, about a foot wide, will be set under the exterior walls. Once the concrete footings have been poured and cured, workers will pour a 4-inch reinforced concrete slab to act as the floor of the gazebo.

The prefabricated steel gazebo was built in Missouri and trucked to Tiverton in June. The kit cost $11,500 — all of it provided through donations to a gazebo fund over the past two years.

The company that built the gazebo offered to erect it, too, but at a very steep price, Public Works Director Steven Berlucchi said.

“For the kind of money they were asking, we thought we would give it try,” he said.

Roger St. Ours operated a small excavator at the side, loading gravel and crushed stone into the holes to anchor and level the plastic tubes that will form the concrete footings.

The crew had strings set out to create level lines and were also using laser levels to check their work.

The gazebo is part of what has become a town recreation center. The park contains ballfields, playground equipment, a skate park and restrooms. The new library is under construction across the street. While the crew worked, they could hear songs and cheers from the children at the YMCA camp being run in Sandywoods Farms, 100 yards away.

Crews will keep at it as time permits, St. Ours said.

“If a tree falls on a road, we will have to stop to take of that, but we’ll keep at this,” he said.